That's why I'm here too. Thanks for playing!+1 to most of this (I think?)
[SNIP]
I do enjoy the discussion/debate.
If there's any one single event that marked the Bronze->Golden transition (I do disagree with that generally, but...if....if...IF...) then it was the advent of Space Invaders. Sure, there was Tank before it, and Pong before that, but Space Invaders destroyed everything that came before. It even put the largest Japanese pachinko maker out of business by pushing pachinko machines off location. There's also the (debated) coin shortage legend.........
And in the home console market, Space Invaders for the Atari 2600 was the first killer app. That console sold a lot, but SI sold millions of units for Atari. Everyone wanted that game.
Most games were in and out in a few weeks or maybe a few months. But
SI had staying power. That's why it's associated with the Golden Age. Space Invaders was everywhere, and it was there for a long time! And everybody wanted a piece of the cash cow. When your SI machine went down, you damned well better fix it. Because you were losing mad stacks. Other games which didn't make that kind of money were easier to sell off (or crush) to be replaced with the next 6-month gamble. SI was around long enough and it's a good enough game that everybody played it in some format.
But I think it also belongs with Bronze Age because everything was Bronze until then. It's in by default. But if you want more....it's B&W, with an overlay, the game play is pretty friggin simple, it was released in 1978 and it immediately had all of the money, (no waiting until 1980), the art package is right out of classic EM world, I think it belongs, etc...

